I do think there was a lot to like in the bones but the execution was just so bad :(. The combination of 90% of the content of the game being doing ubisoft map slop and the story being broken up across media made it pretty miserable, but the moment to moment writing/character development for the party was top notch for sure. I really wanted to like it but actually playing it felt like a chore :(

A lot of people have the hallway complaint, and honestly I think it mostly came down to visuals and sound design. So many games people love have exactly the same level design, including FFX, but there is normally enough to look at, and you don’t have the “high heels on tile” footsteps exacerbating it. I’m also pretty sure a large part of it was a YouTube video pointing it out and people jumping on the bandwagon.

I’ve never played dragon quest, but as a long time final fantasy enjoyer, final fantasy 15 sucked so much I put it down and I never went out of my way to play 16 because of that.

FF7Remake was amazing. FF7Rebirth was good in many ways but also had way too much garbage and goofy shit so I have very mixed feelings about it. Also like the post said it’s a very long wait for a complete story. It also is not really an entry point because FF7 is a huge franchise in itself.

If you take those out of the equation, the last FF games were 13 lightning returns in 2013 which I think is probably good but very different (I didn’t end up finishing but not because I didn’t like it) and 13-2 which in my opinion is one of the best in the series but gets slept on because it’s gated by 13 (2009) which I like but I wouldn’t call amazing or transformative.

I think FF12 might would qualify as a worthy childhood formative game, which means (excluding 16 since I just don’t know) the last good FF that is also an entry point came out in 2006. 20 years ago.

Tldr; I don’t know if FF16 is a worthy childhood formative experience, but if it’s not, the last candidate is TWENTY years ago, so ofc young people aren’t getting attached to the franchise. They’re probably playing jrpgs that are actually good instead.

I don’t dislike that art style in other games but nothing about that trailer gave me castlevania vibes

Animation and sound design reminds me of blasphemous and moonscars, which are games I like, but I wouldn’t say feel very castlevania-y

Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves has Cristiano Ronaldo and Salvatore Ganacci in it. Having a goofy soccer character as a character is out of place in that game, I don’t want real people in fighting games at all, and to top it off, Rinaldo is a piece of shit anyway.

Or they don’t like the character that they don’t have to pick.

Yeah I’m not playing a game when I’ll have to see a real life rapist in the character select screen

This was apparently enough to get that music stuck in my head

Ehhh I know a lot of people that play indie games, but generally they only play one or two genres of them. Part of it is that the terminology gets confusing because people mean different things. Like, other than baldur’s gate, I couldn’t tell you the last western AAA game I played. But I played FF7 rebirth which is definitely AAA but not what people are always talking about when that talk about AAA sinking. There are also tons of studios that you probably wouldn’t call AAA but you also wouldn’t call indie. Like, I probably play more games from Falcom than any other studio. They’re not huge headcount-wise or cutting edge technology-wise but they’ve been consistently making games since the 80s. I think a lot of people don’t bucket those types of developers in their heads at all.

The question is who funds these theoretical new studios? Indie studios more often than not have to make deals with the devil so they can eat. Then, even if their game is a smash hit, the investors take the lion’s share of profit and still control the actual devs by the purse strings. This society is sick.

It has been plenty unreasonable to work for AAA game companies for a long time. Long crunch, layoffs between projects, abuse by managers has been widespread for like 15 years at least. And attempts to remedy these issues with collective bargaining has been met with obvious union busting for several years at least.

Perhaps your definition of a golden age existed and had ended, but if so the end was longer ago than you think and we’re watching the end of an inevitable decline. You also have to compare this to everyone else’s conditions. The fact “gig economy” is even in our lexicon should show how unstable tons of people’s employment and income are.

Can you define “golden age of video games”?

He literally said they’re flooding the zone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_the_zone

not leeching, Valve mostly lucked into this monopoly because of how grossly incompetent competition was at the time.

Just to be clear, the majority of the current competition is not only incompetent but actively malicious. The ones that don’t suck already have a toehold and I would like to see flourish because competition is good for everyone, but this picture you paint of steam is honestly ridiculous.

Thank you. I’m not against any of that, except maybe some definition needs to be applied to what is infra and what is store. For instance, a big part of what people like about steam is that they have reliable reviews. That would need to remain true with this split. I think there is a fine line to walk between enforcing interoperability and compromising or letting other companies leech on steam for no reason. You also seem to be implying that regardless of what store you purchase something on, you can access it from any other store because steam manages the licenses? Seems strange to me.

If you already have an answer then copy paste it. If you already have an answer then why do this weasel dance? You clearly don’t have an answer.

Or, you could just answer by question directly

I epic hasn’t done anything but the bare minimum plus trying to buy their way into the market. Additionally, I don’t trust them a single bit. If they actually managed to get market share they should enshittify before you could blink.

I have even less nice things to say about all the other publisher run marketplaces.

GoG is cool because of their DRM policy and preservation. Steam provides labels for anticonsumer practices so consumers can be informed and does the cool stuff for Linux compatibility.

What exactly are you wanting regulators to do that you think will make people want to use EGS?

If they want more players they could stop using denuvo. I bought almost every atlus game for 20 years but I pretty much only game on PC these days and refuse to buy a single player game with always online drm.

Even the benign psychological manipulation away from just starting a game and enjoying it that is achievements is annoying

Also all the consumer friendly shop page stuff like labeling anti features

I don’t use EGS because it they actually locked in significant market share they would enshittify so fast your head would spin.

I don’t use retro achievements because games are supposed to be fun rather than about checking boxes.

Information good. Hiding information bad. Nefarious intentions.

No, that sounds like moral panic bullshit. If the naked man is not in a sexual at all context because it’s straight up treating them as horses the whole game to be surrealist or whatever, and the kid was fully clothed, then I honestly don’t see what the big deal is. Perhaps it was worse than described, or maybe… There is something we don’t know

Feels like some key piece of information is omitted here tbh

Illusion of Gaia on SNES maybe?

I guess you could say I’m impressed if we were discussing it like a beta preview of something that might be cool eventually. But what we’re doing is treating it like it’s amazing for all sorts of things it sucks at because it’s unreliable and shoving it in everything.

So yeah, I’m unimpressed with the reality vs the sales pitch.

Either you didn’t read what I said originally, didn’t understand it, or are just a sad troll at this point. I recommend touching grass

Can’t really do anything but roll my eyes at this ridiculous hyperboly

It turns out that things are complicated, and that a company that is pro consumer in so many ways that almost nothing else is can get praised for that and denigrated for doing predatory loot boxes.

And that a billionaire owner can get praised for maintaining a pro consumer company and denigrated for running a loot box racket and buying yachts. All at the same time.

It’s so exhausting how people like you have to go on every thread and complain that people are happy about something instead of mad about everything, energy single time the company comes up.

sigh

Do you think RAM is the only thing that factors into performance?..

continues playing trails games in the corner

Apocalypse is a sequel to the neutral route of iv

Edit: In case anyone seeing thinks I’m wrong because some weirdo down voted this, just look at wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shin_Megami_Tensei_IV%3A_Apocalypse

It is the sequel to Shin Megami Tensei IV, set in a post-apocalyptic alternative world.

Anytime I’ve ever complained about lootboxes/gacha/gambling mechanics, I’ve not been excluding valve. That said, there is a contingent of people that likes to chime in to conversations about steam to say people shouldn’t use steam because valve does lootboxes, and I don’t think it’s terribly relevant in those conversations.

If it’s like the last few trails game, it’s not really “you choose whether to play action or turn based” but “play action mode to build up a meter to get an advantage in turn based node when you switch” and you only spend 10 seconds or so in action mode, and also bosses don’t even have an action phase.

Yes? http://metroid.retropixel.net/games/metroid3/metroid3_map.gif

Notice how there is always one close to each boss.

“Nintendo hard” isn’t about difficulty it is about entire games being based around knowledge checks, like having to remember to pre-swing when you jump particular gaps or get knocked into the gap in og ninja gaiden for instance.

Since when do metroidvanias not have save points right outside boss rooms? That’s been the standard since symphony of the night at least…

I actually said I like the mega man version. I think the dark souls version is boring and doesn’t do anything of what you’re saying. I don’t even remember run backs from when I played half of hollow Knight because I didn’t even think the game was hard. It just wasted time in so many ways that I decided I’d rather play a different game that didn’t, but if people had to deal with the time wasting design that I remember and also do dark souls boss run backs then I’m not surprised they’re irritated.

Edit: and no I don’t think DS would be less iconic if you didn’t have to do boring runs between boss attempts…